Wheel of Stars by Andre Norton Page A

seen only as faint lines. These were harshly strong, dark against the light. Also they appeared to move, although when she stared straight at any one it was fixed, solid. Then that above and below the one she so watched flowed and surged. Step by step she began to climb to the three rocks.
    There was warmth against her breast.
    The pendant! She had forgotten the pendant. There flashed into her mind a sharp picture of that dial with its ray of light, light which moved again, touching first this and then that of the symbols. As if it were busily weaving a pattern—building a force. In her warmth grew, the panic shriveled away. She was strengthened, encouraged.
    Gwennan reached the twin stones just as there came a great crack of thunder. The sky itself might have been riven in two just above her head. Lightning struck into the wood, releasing a blinding flash which dazzled the eyes for an instant.
    She staggered. That had struck something. There was an echo following. Then she heard, not another rumble of thunder, but a cry—low yet carrying—a growl. Movement flowed along the edge of the wood which hid Lyle House. There seemed to be a glow, very faint, still discernible.
    A torch—Tor? Had he been in wait for her? Had this compulsion been some trick of his devising? She could not have put into words any firm belief, still the feeling that he could indeed command something she did not understand grew stronger in her.

    The glow advanced steadily from the under-hanging shadow of the trees. It was no torch, rather it outlined some kind of moving figure, one still too dim for her to recognize. The figure itself exuded the light.
    Then the wind carried to her the sickening stench she had smelled twice before. Though this certainly was no black monster indistinguishable in the night’s gloom. It was alien, however, frighteningly alien.
    Gwennan dared not try to retreat from the mound, to attempt to cross the open field behind. This was a hunter. Her knowledge of that came as if it were emitted along with the stench of its body. There was a sense of avid hunger, of also the need to pursue—to cut down—
    Gwennan’s hand slipped within the front of her coat, caught the pendant as one would desperately clasp a talisman. Such a small defense against that which prowled towards her. She took a step closer to the twin rocks, her shoulders brushed both stones as she edged between them. Though what protection they could afford—
    Was it thunder which rent open the world—or another and greater, more tangible power? One Gwennan could not recognize? She was blinded—not by any answering lightning flash, but rather because dark, intense and thick, closed her in—held her. Dark and cold—and a sickening feeling that there existed no stability—that she was being whirled out of all which was right and normal for her kind.
    The dark fell away—not being lifted or dispersed evenly, but as if rents slit in a bag, toreand twisted to give her freedom. There was no night now. Rather light was all about her. She crouched on the ground, her shoulders against solid rock and before her stretched a countryside—no field or meadow of her own knowing—another place.
    She cried out, flinging up one arm to hide her eyes. What had happened back at the standing stones she knew? Had she fallen, been injured so that what she saw now was hallucination? Only it was unchanging. Instead of any sun there was a green glow. The watch which she held in her other hand warmed a little more. There was security somehow in the touch of it—as if the medallion were an anchor holding her to a point of precarious safety. She fought a small battle with her fear and lowered her arm, forcing herself to look about.
    Before and below her stretched open land—though, as she turned her head slowly, first right and then left—she sighted a dense shadow which she believed marked a forest, taller, thicker, more of a barrier than any wood she knew. The open land possessed a